hang on to your hopes my friend
by alessandriana
Summary: In the wake of Vanya's concert, the siblings regroup. (Canon divergence AU where Vanya doesn't blow up the moon.)


The gun went off. Vanya's powers released and Klaus dropped, landing on his hands and knees bare inches from the first row of chairs. Adrenaline got him onto his feet just in time to see her collapse backwards into Allison's arms.

Her built-up powers went streaming off into space like a white laser, and missed the moon by the barest handbreadth.

Her glow faded, as did the last echoing reverberations of her music, and heavy silence descended. Klaus hauled himself up onto the stage, ears ringing, feeling as if every part of his body had decided to rebel against the shit it'd been put through, but he had to know-

"Is she alive?" Luther asked, crouching down by Allison, who nodded with naked relief in her eyes, mouthing _Yeah_.

"Oh, thank God," Klaus breathed, turning away as relief swept through him, leaving him shaky and sick. He wanted to lie down right there on the stage, but instead ten months of habit had him scanning the room for any of those soldiers that might still be alive. All the lights in the concert hall had gone out. Pale moonlight was the only thing illuminating the scene, casting shadows where anything could be hiding. He wanted to get up and check. He didn't want to leave his family behind. He rocked on his heels, caught between the two impulses.

Ben crouched next to him, put a hand on his shoulder. Klaus didn't feel anything this time, just the usual faint fizzy static of ghost touch. Something in his chest twinged uncomfortably; his powers felt stretched thin.

"Stay," Ben said. "I'll look around."

Klaus nodded with a quick smile, tears of gratitude prickling at the corners of his eyes. "Thanks."

A few feet away, Diego pushed himself to his feet. He looked about as good as Klaus felt, gray under the skin; blood trickled down the side of his face. He stood with one elbow clamped to his ribs, like he'd done something to them. "I'll go make sure there's none of those soldiers running around," he said, anyways, and Luther nodded, saying, "I'll come with you."

"Ben's checking," Klaus said. He wrapped his arms around his middle. "He'll let us know."

Diego and Luther exchanged a glance. Klaus was shocked when, instead of arguing, they nodded. Diego even lowered his knife, though he didn't put it back in its holster.

"Klaus, about earlier, at the bowling alley-" Luther started.

Klaus rubbed his eyes with both hands. They came away smeared with eyeliner. _Shame_, he thought. Though at this point the makeup was probably a lost cause. "It's fine," he interrupted.

"No, it's not," Luther said. "What you and Ben did... that was amazing. I'm sorry we didn't believe you." He paused. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

"Me too," Diego said, and Allison nodded. Five just made a face and went to stand at the edge of the stage, which Klaus knew meant he felt guilty but was too emotionally fucked in the head to admit it. Seeing the rest of them looking at him with apparent sincerity, Klaus felt his chest clench around some nameless emotion, grief and anger and relief intermixed, so large it felt hard to breathe. He said, shakily, "I _did_ tell you so."

"Yeah, you did." Luther looked like he was about to say something else, but Five's expression had gone suddenly intent- he held up an impatient hand.

"Do you guys hear that?"

Klaus listened, but he was distracted when Ben come down the aisle at a jog. "Cops!"

"-Police sirens," Luther said, voice overlapping.

After a half second Klaus could hear them too, pitch rising as they got rapidly closer. After the quiet the piercing noise felt like someone shoving an icepick in his brain. He winced and clapped his hands over his ears, though it didn't help much.

"We need to get out of here. Now." Luther stood, cradling Vanya in his arms like she weighed nothing.

Ben said, "I didn't see any of those guys left alive. There's a back entrance you can use."

Klaus nodded and repeated for the benefit of everyone else, "Coast is clear, Ben says! Out the back!"

He went to stand, and the world tipped sideways.

He came back to a strong arm wrapped under his arms and Diego's voice muttering in his ear, "Goddammit Klaus, if you could just walk, this would be a hell of a lot easier. One foot in front of the other, you've been doing it for the last twenty-nine years-"

"Diego?" Klaus felt like he was drunk, except without any of the pleasant parts of being drunk, just the dizziness and the sensation that the world was moving too fast for him to keep up. He got his feet under him at least, and when his knees didn't fail him, was able to take some of his own weight.

"Oh, thank fuck. You back?"

Back where? "Where are we?" Klaus wet his lips. He was desperately thirsty.

"Alley behind the theater."

Klaus tipped his head back, glancing around. "Oh, heyyy. I recognize this place." He'd sucked a guy's cock over behind that fire escape a few years back, he thought. Or maybe that had been the movie theater over on Ninth. Or both?

"You know you said that out loud, right?" That was Luther, sounding strangled. He was crouched behind that same fire escape and was holding himself very still, like he was trying to avoid touching any of the surfaces around him. Vanya was a blurry streak of white in his arms.

Klaus just squinted at him. He wanted to make a clever comment, but he wasn't exactly feeling his best. He was so fucking tired. Part of it was the lingering effects of withdrawal- it took days, weeks, months to get through, or so he'd heard- and part of it was whatever Vanya had done to them- and part of it was overusing his powers.

Before he could think of anything, Five popped back into existence- Klaus hadn't realized he'd been gone- and said, "Okay, I got the door unlocked. If we go through this building, the street on the other side is clear. The cops are concentrated around the theater, obviously."

Diego urged him forward.

After that, Klaus... lost track of things. He focused on moving. Diego helped.

He felt sick and cold and hollowed out.

An eternity passed, and then, without precisely noticing the transition, he was being folded into a bed- in a shitty motel room, with ugly flower curtains and stained carpet and a duvet that looked like it hadn't been washed in years- and it was so much like the one where Hazel and Cha-Cha had tortured him that he roused again, the smell of dust and stale cigarette smoke filling his lungs. Klaus coughed, choked, sucked in a breath. "Ben?"

"Right here, Klaus." Ben's hand waved in front of his eyes. The skin around his eyes was pinched with something like worry.

Diego was there too, a warm hand squeezing the back of his neck. "Klaus, look at me, you're fine."

Klaus's blind panic faded. Still he fought to get upright on the bed, though he didn't make it very far; finally Diego hauled him the rest of the way. He settled carefully back against the baseboard, head pounding as he scanned the room.

Vanya was sprawled unconscious beside him on the bed, looking ten years younger without the stress lines creasing her forehead. Allison was seated cross-legged on the far end with a pillow propped behind her back, and Luther was perched awkwardly on the edge of the ugly overstuffed armchair, holding her hand. Five was over by the window, peering out the blinds.

That was everyone accounted for. Klaus felt the band of tension around his chest ease a fraction.

Diego was still watching him, eyebrows pulled down in worry. Klaus dredged up a smile and said, teasingly, "One bed for all seven of us, really? _Kinky_."

"He's feeling better," Diego announced dryly to the room at large. His shoulders relaxed.

"It's the only place we could get with the cash we had on hand," Five explained. He squinted, ducking his head to see better. "Can't use credit cards, in case they're tracking us that way."

Ben still looked concerned. Klaus turned so he wouldn't have to see it and asked, "Who's _they_?"

"The Commission. The police. Does it matter?" Five flicked the blinds shut and vanished into the bathroom, where the sink started running. He came out with a plastic cup full of water, which he thrust at Klaus. "Here, drink that. You sound like shit."

"Sweet-talker." Klaus took it, though, in hands that trembled, and downed it in three long gulps. He felt steadier afterwards, and the pounding in his head ticked down a notch.

"-don't know what to do," Luther said to Allison. He was speaking quietly, but the room was so small it was impossible not to overhear. "She killed Pogo-"

Diego's head went up, attention shifting from Klaus. "And Mom," he added, voice tight with grief.

(Klaus closed his eyes for a moment to wonder when exactly Pogo was going to show up. Or Mom. Did robots even have souls?)

Luther nodded at Diego. "Right. And she almost caused the apocalypse."

Allison scribbled something emphatic on her pad of paper, tapping it on Luther's chest when she was done. He took it and his face crumpled as he read. He looked away, rubbing the back of his head, and was quiet for a long moment. "I know. I never should have locked her in there. I should have listened to you guys."

Klaus closed his eyes against the memory of Vanya's terrified face vanishing behind the thick steel doors of the confinement room, which echoed the memory of _his father shutting the mausoleum's door, locking him in with the ghosts-_

A shudder ran through him. He should have gone back and let her out. God, he wished someone had gone and let him out.

Vanya's hand lay limp on the bedspread next to him, calloused from her instrument, fingernails bitten to the quick.

Less than an hour ago, she'd been trying to kill him.

Less than an hour ago, he'd been willing to kill her.

She didn't look anything like that person right now. She looked like the sister who'd covered for him when he'd snuck out of the house at night, who hadn't said a word when he'd come home smelling like weed or sex, had held him after Ben had died and he hadn't been able to stop crying-

_Allison laying in a pool of blood on the cabin floor, throat slashed-_

She'd said it'd been an accident.

_Mom waving goodbye as the house cracked into rubble around her-_

It wasn't like Klaus could claim his own hands were clean. He'd killed, both on missions for dear old dad and during those ten months in Vietnam. Not often, but enough.

(Never anyone he loved, though.)

On the other side of the room Five said, darkly, "Yeah, well, who says the apocalypse is over?" Klaus felt his stomach clench, acid burning the back of his throat. "The Commission is persistent, they're not going to give up just because there's been a temporary setback. They'll try to set it off some other way-"

It was too much, the words and the memories and the guilt and the headache pounding nauseatingly at his temples. Klaus rolled off the bed and staggered to the bathroom to throw up.

Ben was sitting on the edge of the sink, legs swinging, when Klaus shut the lid and flushed. The tile walls magnified the sound all out of proportion. Klaus collapsed backwards to lean against the tub, feeling like someone had scooped out his insides. He'd been in a hundred shitty bathrooms just like this one, mostly high out of his mind, but this time there was nothing to keep him from noticing the dirt and the black mold growing on the wallpaper and the foul taste in his mouth, and no soundproofing to block out the sound of his siblings still arguing about Vanya. He could feel black depression crawling in around the edges, trying to suck him back under.

The linoleum was cracked and warped where it met the tub; he picked at the edges with shaking fingers, wondering if anyone would notice if he crawled out the window. Probably not for a few minutes at least. There'd be a dealer nearby; there always was in a place like this.

Ben said, warningly, "Don't even think about it."

Klaus leaned back further until he could rest his head against the cool ceramic. The lights burned, so he closed his eyes. When he spoke, his voice came out thin and needy. "Some vicodin sure would help this headache."

When Klaus opened his eyes again, Ben was crouched just in front him, face inches away. Klaus swallowed a yelp, flinching backwards against the tub.

Ben said, very calmly, "Klaus, I got to interact with the living world today for the first time in ten years. With my _family_. If you go off and get high, I might never get to talk to them again. Would you really do that to me?"

Klaus pressed a hand to his chest, trying to drive back the guilt. "Oh, low blow, brother."

Ben reached out. Faint static brushed against Klaus's knuckles; his powers twinged. Ben's expression spoke volumes.

Klaus pulled away, drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, thinking about lovely, lovely oblivion in a bottle. Or a pill. It would make things so much easier. He could stop caring about the apocalypse. He could stop worrying about his powers and what this new ability meant. He could stop caring about what would happen to Vanya.

He could just... stop.

The thought of having to live out the rest of his days in the real world, unfiltered, was a vast weight pressing on his chest. Like sitting at the bottom of the ocean, sunlight unreachably far overhead.

His heart sank. _Dave_. He hadn't seen Dave yet. He never would, if he-

Ben was still watching him. Klaus rubbed a shaking hand across his cheeks, wiping away the hot tears. He wanted to say something light and funny, but instead what came out was a raw, honest, "I don't know if I can." Even for Ben. Even for Dave. He hadn't been this sober this long since he was sixteen, and every inch of him hurt.

On the other side of the wall Five said, "How do we know she's not going to try to kill us all again when she wakes up?"

Diego's voice. "Then what exactly do you suggest we do? Murder her in her sleep?"

Five. "No! I just-" His voice dropped off into intelligibility.

Klaus thought again of the mausoleum door shutting in his face, Dad's voice echoing, _Three more hours_.

It was after that incident he'd started sneaking out at night. Looking for anything that would take away the memory of hands reaching for him in the dark- cold, dry- whispering, pleading, screaming _Klaus, Klaus_.

He couldn't really blame Vanya for going nuts after an experience like that, not when he'd basically done the same.

(But it hadn't made Klaus try to kill anyone.)

(Well, besides occasionally himself.)

Ben said, "Ten minutes."

Klaus roused himself from the memory of dank air and stone walls with an effort. For a moment the words didn't make any sense. "What?" he managed.

Ben glanced at his wrist like he was checking a watch the asshole didn't actually have. "You've been in here ten minutes, and you haven't even tried to make a break for it."

Klaus was pretty sure one of them wasn't making sense; he just wasn't sure if it was Ben or him. "I really don't follow."

Ben jerked his chin at the window. "Three days ago, you'd have been out that as soon as the door closed, no matter what I said."

Klaus glanced over his shoulder. The moon shone through frosted glass. It looked locked, but not painted shut. His hands fisted on the linoleum, then relaxed. He was so exhausted. Get out the window? He might as well try to climb a mountain.

Ben said, "You're stronger than you think."

Klaus gave a shaky laugh. "And _you're_ naive."

"Oh, please. I've been haunting you day in and day out for the last fourteen years. You really think so?" Ben spread his hands. "I'm not asking you to promise forever. Just... give me another day. Another chance. And then we can talk about it again tomorrow night."

Klaus pressed trembling hands together. A day. Twenty-four hours. Half of which he'd probably end up sleeping through. He closed his eyes and swallowed. Tried to remember how he'd felt the moment he'd conjured Ben into the living world. That golden memory of triumph shored him up long enough to say, "Ugh. Jesus Christ. If I do this, you owe me."

Ben's shoulders relaxed, and he gave a rare smile. "Yeah, I do." He stuck his hand out. "So, deal?"

Klaus reached for him, and for the briefest moment he felt the press of real flesh.

Then his chest spasmed and he lurched forward, black sparkles crawling across the edges of his vision. "Oh god, bad idea," he croaked. He needed water. He needed- he grabbed for the towel rack to pull himself up; it cracked under his weight, and he went crashing forward into sink. "Mother_fuck_."

"Everything alright in there?" Luther called through the door.

Klaus huddled on the floor, clutching his forehead. That was going to leave a bruise. "Things are just peachy!"

The doorknob rattled, threatening to pop out of the frame. Klaus took a steadying breath and called, "Seriously, don't come in, I'm not decent!"

The door knob stopped moving. Luther said, suspiciously, "Klaus, seriously, what's going on?"

"I'm not doing drugs, if that's what you're asking!"

"It wasn't, actually!"

Oh. While Klaus was busy being startled by that, the door knob twisted and the lock popped. Luther shouldered his way inside, so large he was hardly able to fit through the door. Klaus stared up at him and made no attempt to get up off the floor. He felt like his muscles had turned to water.

Adopting as offended a tone as he could muster, he asked, "And what exactly were you going to do if I'd been naked?"

"Uh..." Exhibiting wisdom Klaus hadn't known he possessed, Luther chose to ignore that comment. "C'mon, don't sit on that floor, it's disgusting." With what appeared to be no effort, he hauled Klaus to his feet, taking the majority of his weight. Klaus reeled, then steadied.

"Wait a sec, Luther." Klaus punched Luther in the shoulder when he didn't stop. "I need water."

"Oh, yeah, sure." Luther paused, supporting Klaus while he rinsed and spit the foul taste out of his mouth, then swallowed six handfuls of water in a row. The cold water hit his stomach almost painfully.

Straightening from the sink, he caught Ben's eye in the mirror; there was a guilty expression on his face. "Maybe we hold off on doing that again for a bit," Klaus said, with a shaky smile.

Luther furrowed his brow. "Hold off on what?"

Ben said, "That's probably a good idea."

Klaus nodded at Ben, and said to Luther, "Not talking to you, brother dearest."

"Is it... Ben?" Luther visibly checked the rest of the bathroom, saw nothing, realized he was taking up almost all of the open space, and asked hesitantly, "Where is he?"

Klaus smirked. "He's standing in the bathtub."

"Oh." Luther turned to face the tub. He was about a foot off target; Klaus reached out and nudged him in the right direction.

Luther said, "Hey, Ben. Thanks for the help earlier, that was amazing."

Ben's blinding grin made everything worth it. He said, "Glad I could help. Just like old times, huh?"

Klaus repeated it for Luther's sake. Luther said, blinking hard, "Yeah. Totally."

Back in the main room, Diego and Five were still arguing, though it had detoured into something about predestination; Klaus didn't pretend to understand it.

Luther helped him back to the bed and lowered him down carefully. Klaus stayed laying down this time; the world spun around him like a top.

Luther straightened and asked, "He's been with you the whole time? Ever since he died?"

"He showed up about a week after." Klaus added, without quite meaning to, "He's the only one who wouldn't go away, no matter what I did."

Luther set a hand on Klaus's shoulder, briefly. "I'm glad he was there for you."

Klaus shut his eyes, feeling them prickle with heat. After a moment Luther stepped away and went to rejoin the argument, and Klaus flopped onto his side, arm under his head, staring at Vanya. She hadn't moved, but the stress lines had reappeared on her forehead.

On the other side of the room Diego said, loudly, "Dad couldn't teach her to control her powers, so how exactly do you expect _us_ to?"

There was the sound of pen ripping across paper as Allison responded. Five said, "Dad's idea of training qualifies as child abuse in most countries. Maybe we try _not_ being raging assholes?"

As Klaus watched, a tear started at the corner of Vanya's eye and beaded there for a moment before it grew large enough to fall. A second and a third followed it, faster than the first.

No one was paying him or Vanya the slightest bit of attention (except Ben, and he didn't count). Klaus reached out and took Vanya's hand in his own. Her fingers twitched in his, then stilled. Her eyes, when they opened a fraction, had gone back to their normal brown.

He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. Her skin was dry and chapped. "Back with us?" he whispered.

"I just tried to kill a lot of people, didn't I," she said, the barest breath of air.

Klaus's face said it all. She took a shuddering breath, and her tears began to fall faster. "I didn't mean to. I didn't-"

Klaus squeezed her hand. "It'll be okay," he whispered.

She tried to pull away, but he held on tight. "How can you _possibly_ know that?"

"I don't," Klaus confessed. He glanced over at Ben, sitting next to them on the corner of the bed. Ben gave a little nod. "But. One day at a time, right?"

Vanya didn't respond. But after a moment, she turned her hand in his and held on tight.


End file.
